Project Management ToolBox: Tools

and Techniques for the Practicing

Project Manager 2nd Edition, (Ebook
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vi CONTENTS

5 SCOPE PLANNING 111

Project SWOT Analysis 111
Performing a Project SWOT Analysis 112
Using a Project SWOT Analysis 116
Benefits 117
The Scope Statement 118
Developing a Scope Statement 118
Using a Scope Statement 124
Variations 124
Benefits 125
The Work Breakdown Structure 126
Constructing a Project WBS: A Top-Down
Approach 128
Establish the WBS Level of Detail 130
Constructing a Project WBS: A Bottom-Up
Approach 134
Using the WBS 135
Benefits 136
The Product Breakdown Structure 137
Constructing a Product Breakdown
Structure 137
Using the PBS 141
Benefits 141
References 142

6 SCHEDULE DEVELOPMENT 145

The Gantt Chart 146
Developing a Gantt Chart 146
Using the Gantt Chart 149
Benefits 149
The Milestone Chart 150
Developing a Milestone Chart 151
Using the Milestone Chart 153
Benefits 154
 CONTENTS vii

The Critical Path Method Diagram 154

Constructing a CPM Diagram 155
Using the CPM Diagram 160
Benefits 161
Variations 161

The Time-Scaled Arrow Diagram 162

Developing a TAD 162
Using a TAD 167
Benefits 168

The Critical Chain Schedule 168

Developing a Critical Chain Schedule 169
Using the Critical Chain Schedule 172
Benefits 173

The Hierarchical Schedule 173

Constructing a Hierarchical Schedule 174
Using a Hierarchical Schedule 176
Benefits 177

Line of Balance 177

Developing a Line-of-Balance Schedule 178
Using the LOB 180
Benefits 181

Choosing Your Scheduling Tools 181

References 183

7 COST PLANNING 185

The Cost-Planning Map 185
Developing a Cost-Planning Map 186
Using the Cost-Planning Map 191
Benefits 191

Analogous Estimate 191

Developing an Analogous Estimate 192
Using an Analogous Estimate 193
Benefits 193
viii CONTENTS

Parametric Estimate 194

Developing Parametric Estimates 194
Using Parametric Estimates 198
Benefits 198
Bottom-up Estimate 199
Developing Bottom-Up Estimates 200
Using Bottom-Up Estimates 202
Benefits 202
The Cost Baseline 203
Developing a Cost Baseline 203
Using the Cost Baseline 207
Benefits 208
Choosing a Cost-Planning Tool 211
References 211

PART IV: PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION TOOLS 213

8 SCOPE MANAGEMENT 215

Project Scope Control System 217
Establishing a Project Scope Control
System 217
Using the Project Scope Control System 220
Benefits 223
Project Change Request 223
Developing a Project Change Request 224
Using the Project Change Request 228
Benefits 229
The Project Change Log 229
Developing a Project Change Log 230
Using the Project Change Log 232
Benefits 233
The Scope Control Decision Checklist 233
Developing a Scope Control Decision
Checklist 233
 CONTENTS ix

Using the Scope Control Decision

Checklist 234
Benefits 235
References 235

9 SCHEDULE MANAGEMENT 237

The Burn Down Chart 239
Developing the Burn Down Chart 239
Using the Burn Down Chart 240
Benefits 242
The Slip Chart 243
Developing the Slip Chart 244
Using the Slip Chart 246
Benefits 246
The Buffer Chart 247
Developing the Buffer Chart 248
Using the Buffer Chart 249
Benefits 250
The Jogging Line 251
Constructing a Jogging Line 252
Using the Jogging Line 255
Variations 256
Benefits 256
The Milestone Prediction Chart 257
Constructing the Milestone Prediction
Chart 258
Using the Milestone Prediction Chart 260
Benefits 260
B-C-F Analysis 261
Performing the B-C-F Analysis 262
Using the B-C-F Analysis 264
Benefits 265
Schedule Crashing 265
Performing Schedule Crashing 265
Using Schedule Crashing 269
Benefits 269
x CONTENTS

Choosing Your Schedule Management Tools 269

References 270

10 COST MANAGEMENT 273

Cost Management Plan 275
Developing the Cost Management Plan 275
Using the Cost Management Plan 276
The Budget Consumption Chart 276
Developing the Budget Consumption
Chart 277
Using the Budget Consumption Chart 278
Variations 279
Benefits 279
Earned Value Analysis 280
Performing Earned Value Analysis 281
Using Earned Value Analysis 292
Variations 293
Benefits 293
Milestone Analysis 294
Performing a Milestone Analysis 295
Using the Milestone Analysis 297
Benefits 297
Choosing Your Cost Management Tools 297
References 298

11 AGILE PROJECT EXECUTION 301

Contributed by
Peerasit Patanakul
James Henry
Jeffrey A. Leach

Scrum Basics 302

Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog 304
Information on the Backlogs 304
Populating Backlogs 304
Benefits 306
 CONTENTS xi

Release Planning 307

The Release-Planning Event 308
Initial Draft Release Plan 309
Final Release Plans 309
HIP Sprint 310
Release Planning versus Sprint Planning 310
Benefits 311

The Daily Scrum Meeting 311

Organizing a Daily Scrum Meeting 312
Benefits 312

Sprint Task Board 313

Using the Sprint Task Board 313
Benefits 314

The Sprint Burn Down Chart 315

Developing a Sprint Burn Down Chart 315
Using a Sprint Burn Down Chart 316
Benefits 317

The Sprint Retrospective Meeting 317

Organizing a Sprint Retrospective
Meeting 318
Using a Sprint Retrospective Meeting 318
Benefits 320

Concluding Remarks 320

References 321

PART V: PROJECT REPORTING AND

CLOSURE TOOLS 323

12 PERFORMANCE REPORTING 325

Project Reporting Checklist 325
Developing the Project Reporting
Checklist 326
Using the Project Reporting Checklist 326
Benefits 326
xii CONTENTS

The Project Strike Zone 328

Developing the Project Strike Zone 328
Using the Project Strike Zone 330
Benefits 332
The Project Dashboard 332
Designing a Project Dashboard 334
Using the Project Dashboard 335
Benefits 336
The Summary Status Report 337
Developing a Summary Status Report 337
Using the Summary Status Report 342
Benefits 343
The Project Indicator 343
Developing the Project Indicator 345
Using the Project Indicator 346
Variations 346
Benefits 348
Choosing Your Reporting Tools 349
References 349

13 PROJECT CLOSURE 351

Contributed by Tim Rahschulte, PhD

Understanding Project Closure 351

Project Closing Activities 353
Project Closure Plan and Checklist 356
Developing the Plan and Checklist 358
Using the Closure Plan and Checklist 362
Benefits 362
The Project Closure Report 363
Developing the Project Closure Report 363
Using the Project Closure Report 365
Benefits 365
Postmortem Review 366
Conducting the Postmortem Review 366
Using the Postmortem Review 369
 CONTENTS xiii

Variations 371
Benefits 372
Concluding Remarks 373
References 373

PART VI: RISK AND STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT

TOOLS 375

14 MANAGING PROJECT RISK 377

Risk Management Plan 378
Developing a Risk Management Plan 378
Using the Risk Management Plan 385
Benefits 386
The Risk Identification Checklist 387
Developing a Risk Identification Checklist 387
Using a Risk Identification Checklist 389
Benefits 389
The Risk Register 390
Creating a Risk Register 390
Using the Risk Register 393
Benefits 394
The Risk Assessment Matrix 394
Developing a Risk Assessment Matrix 395
Using the Risk Assessment Matrix 397
Variations 398
Benefits 398
Monte Carlo Analysis 399
Performing a Monte Carlo Analysis 400
Using the Monte Carlo Analysis 408
Benefits 409
The Decision Tree 409
Analyzing the Decision Tree 410
Using Decision Trees 413
Benefits 414
xiv CONTENTS

The Risk Dashboard 414

Developing the Risk Dashboard 414
Using the Risk Dashboard 418
Benefits 418
Choosing Your Risk Management Tools 420
References 420

15 INFLUENCING PROJECT STAKEHOLDERS 423

The Stakeholder Management Plan 423
Developing a Stakeholder Management
Plan 424
Using the Stakeholder Management Plan 427
Benefits 427
The Stakeholder Map 428
Developing a Stakeholder Map 428
Using the Stakeholder Map 431
Benefits 431
The Stakeholder Analysis Table 431
Developing a Stakeholder Analysis Table 433
Using the Stakeholder Analysis Table 434
Benefits 435
The Stakeholder Evaluation Matrix 436
Developing a Stakeholder Evaluation
Matrix 438
Using the Stakeholder Evaluation Matrix 439
Variations 441
Benefits 443
The Stakeholder Strategy Matrix 444
Developing a Stakeholder Strategy Matrix 444
Using the Stakeholder Strategy Matrix 446
Benefits 447
Choosing Your Stakeholder Management Tools 447
References 449
Final Thoughts on The PM Toolbox 449

Index 451
 PREFACE

M
uch has changed since the publication of the first edition of this book, as the
field of project management (PM) is continually evolving. Part of that evolution
has involved a new approach for selecting project management tools from an
ad-hoc “choose as you use” approach to a more systematic approach of creating a PM
Toolbox that can be applied to many project situations. From this perspective, we feel
fortunate to have been part of the recent project management evolution.
We also feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work firsthand with many
project managers and project office directors as they set about the task of creating their
initial PM Toolboxes based on the teachings of this text. Our personal understanding of
how project management is evolving and how it affects the needs for PM tools has been
greatly enhanced. This new understanding became the basis for the changes introduced
in this second edition.
The most significant changes in this edition are in four areas. First, we have focused
the content of the book on the fundamental project management practice areas to
create more depth in content. Next, we have maintained the traditional view of project
management tools but have also provided a contemporary set of tools that reflect the
changes in PM practices. Then, to strengthen an area that has created some of the most
positive reader feedback, we have enhanced the various tips, tricks, and examples found
throughout the book. Finally, we worked to create a stronger message concerning the
importance of creating a PM Toolbox that enables stronger alignment between busi-
ness strategy and project execution, between strategic goals and project deliverables,
and between the work of senior leaders and project managers.
This book has established itself as both educational lecture material and an industry
practice reference, which we hope to maintain with this second edition. Our heartfelt
thanks to the existing and future readers of this book; we hope you find it both enjoyable
and useful to read.
Of course, we would like to hear from you directly and get your feedback at
www.programmanagement-academy.com. Supplemental materials and templates can
be found on our web site as well.

xv
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

W
e would like to thank the many people who have helped in making this book
a reality.
To our contributing authors, whose subject matter expertise is appreciated:
Debra Lavell, Jim Waddell, Tim Rahschulte, Peerasit Patanakul, James Henrey, and Jeffrey
Leach.
To the team at John Wiley & Sons, who continue to provide outstanding support and
guidance. In particular, we want to thank our executive editor, Margaret Cummins, and
our assistant editor, Amanda Shettleton. Your continued partnership and collaboration
is greatly valued.
To our many colleagues and coworkers who have contributed to the concepts pre-
sented in this work in many ways.
To our families who provide the support and encouragement necessary to complete
the writing process.
We are truly blessed to be associated with such a wonderful and supportive com-
munity of people!

xvii
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Predominant Principles and Excitements in the Human Mind, On
the, xi. 258.
Prejudice, On, xii. 391, 394, 396.
Press, The—Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, and Bentham, xi. 411.
Priestley, The late Dr., xii. 357.
Prose-Style of Poets, On the, vii. 5.
Public Opinion, On, xii. 311.
Pulpit Oratory, Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Irving, xii. 275.
Punishment of Death, On the, xii. 466.

Quarterly Review, The, iii. 192.

Queries and Answers; or the Rule of Contrary, xii. 296.

Racine, vii. 336.

‘Ravens, The,’ xi. 303.
Reading New Books, On, xii. 161.
—— Old Books, On, vii. 220.
Reason and Imagination, vii. 44.
Recruiting Officer, The, viii. 285.
Reform, The New School of, vii. 179.
Regal Character, On the, iii. 305.
Religious Hypocrisy, On, i. 128.
Respectable People, On, vii. 360; xi. 433.
Return from Parnassus, The, v. 274.
Reynolds, Life of Sir Joshua, x. 172.
Reynolds’s Discourses, Introduction to an account of Sir Joshua, xi.
208.
—— —— On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua, vi. 122, 131.
Richard Cœur de Lion, viii. 195.
—— II., i. 272.
—— III., i. 298; viii. 298.
Richesse de la langue, xii. 496.
Rochefoucault’s Maxims, On, xi. 253.
Romeo and Juliet, i. 248; viii. 300.
Round Table, The, i. 1.
Rousseau, On the Character of, i. 88.
Rowley, v. 192.
Royal Academy, ix. 434.

Salvator, Lady Morgan’s Life of, x. 276.

Schlegel on the Drama, x. 78.
Scholars, The Shyness of, xii. 68.
School for Scandal, The, viii. 250.
Scotch Character, On the, xii. 253.
Scott, Sir Walter, iv. 241.
—— —— Racine and Shakespear, vii. 336.
Sects and Parties, xii. 360.
Select British Poets, Preface and Critical List of Authors from, v. 365.
Self-Love, On, xi. 132.
—— and Benevolence, xii. 95, 104.
Shakespear, vii. 336;
Doubtful Plays of, i. 353;
On the Dramatic Writers contemporary with, Lyly, Marlow,
Heywood, Middleton, and Rowley, v. 192;
Poems and Sonnets, i. 357.
Shakespear’s Plays, Characters of, i. 165;
 Female Characters, xi. 290.
Shakespeare, Historical Illustrations of, xi. 601.
Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, On, viii. 30.
—— and Milton, On, v. 44.
—— [and Posthumous Fame], i. 21.
Shelley’s Posthumous Poems, x. 256.
She Stoops to Conquer, xi. 403.
Sick Chamber, The, xi. 125.
Siddons, Mrs. viii. 312; xi. 381.
Siddons’s Lady Macbeth, Mrs., viii. 373.
Sidney’s Arcadia, Sir P., v. 295.
Single Plays, Poems, etc., The Four P’s, The Return from Parnassus,
Gammer Gurton’s Needle, and Other Works, On, v. 274.
Sismondi’s Literature of the South, x. 44.
Sitting for One’s Picture, On, vii. 107.
Smiles and Tears, viii. 266.
Society, A New View of, iii. 121.
Southey, Mr., iv. 262.
—— Poet-Laureat, iii. 48.
—— Robert.... A Letter to William Smith, iii. 210, 218, 224.
Southey’s New-Year’s Ode, Mr., iii. 49.
Spenser, v. 19.
Spirit of Obligations, vii. 78.
—— of the Age, The, iv. 185.
Spurzheim’s Theory, On Dr., vii. 137.
Spy-System, On the, iii. 232, 234.
Staël’s Account of German Philosophy and Literature, Madame de,
xi. 162, 167, 172, 180.
Stafford’s Gallery, The Marquis of, ix. 27.
Stage, The, xi. 191;
A View of the English, viii. 169.
Standard Novels and Romances, x. 25.
State Prisoners, On the Treatment of, iii. 238.
Statesman’s Manual, The, ... by S. T. Coleridge, Esq., iii. 143.
Success in Life, On the Qualifications necessary to, vii. 195.
Suckling, viii. 49.
Sun-Dial, On a, xii. 51.
Swift, Young, Gray, Collins, etc., On, v. 104.

Table-Talk; or Original Essays on Men and Manners, vi. 1.

Taming of the Shrew, The, i. 341.
—— —— and L’Avare, xi. 377.
Taste, Thoughts on, xi. 450, 454, 459.
Tatler, On the, i. 7.
Taylor, Jeremy, v. 326.
Tempest, The, i. 238; viii. 234.
Tendency of Sects, On the, i. 47.
Theatres, The, and Passion Week, xi. 358.
Theatrical Debuts, viii. 341.
Thomson and Cowper, On, v. 85.
Thought and Action, On, vi. 101.
Three Quarters, etc., The, xi. 384.
Times Newspaper, The, iii. 169.
—— —— Illustration of the, iii. 155, 161.
Timon of Athens, i. 210.
Toad-Eaters and Tyrants, On the connection between, iii. 169.
Tooke, The Late Mr. Horne, iv. 231.
Tooke’s ‘Diversions of Purley,’ On, xi. 119.
Touch-Stone, The, viii. 368.
Trifles Light as Air, xii. 370.
Troilus and Cressida, i. 221.
Tucker’s Light of Nature Pursued, Preface to an Abridgment of, iv.
369.
Twelfth Night; or, What you Will, i. 313.
Two Gentlemen of Verona, The, i. 318.
Two Words, viii. 330.

Unknown Guest, The, viii. 224.

Vanbrugh, viii. 70.

Vandyke, On a Portrait of an English Lady, by, vii. 280.
Vatican, The, ix. 359.
Venice Preserved, xi. 402.
Vetus, iii. 57.
—— Illustrations of, iii. 63, 67, 73, 85, 90.
View of the English Stage, A, viii. 169.
Vulgarity and Affectation, On, vi. 156.

Walpole, Letters of Horace, x. 159.

War and Taxes, On the Effects of, iii. 243.
War, On the Late, iii. 96.
Wat Tyler, iii. 192, 200.
Webster, v. 223.
Wellesley, The Marquis, iii. 47.
Western, Esq., M.P., The Speech of Charles C., iii. 127, 132.
West’s Picture of Death on the Pale Horse, ix. 318.
Where to find a friend, viii. 258.
Wilberforce, Mr. iv. 325.
Wilkie’s Pictures, On Mr., xi. 249.
Williams’s Views in Greece, On, ix. 324.
Will-Making, On, vi. 113.
Wilson’s Landscapes, at the British Institution, xi. 198.
Wilton, Stourhead, etc., Pictures at, ix. 55.
Windsor Castle, The Pictures at, ix. 36.
Winter’s Tale, The, i. 324.
Wit and Humour, viii. 1.
Wit, Definition of, xii. 445.
Wonder, The, viii. 332; xi. 401.
Wordsworth, Mr., iv. 270; xi. 411; xii. 328.
Wordsworth’s poem, The Excursion, Observations on Mr., i. 111, 120.
—— new poem, The Excursion, Character of Mr., xi. 572.
Writing and Speaking, On the difference between, vii. 262.
Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, On, viii. 70.

Young, v. 104.
Young’s Hamlet, xi. 394.
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh
University Press

1. Those essays which are now republished for the first time are indicated by
an asterisk.
2. This essay was apparently not published in The Atlas.
3. Scroggins said of the Gas-man, that he thought he was a man of that
courage, that if his hands were cut off, he would still fight on with the stumps—like
that of Widrington,—

——‘In doleful dumps,

Who, when his legs were smitten off
Still fought upon his stumps.’

4. ‘The gentle and free passage of arms at Ashby’ was, we are told, so called by
the Chroniclers of the time, on account of the feats of horsemanship and the
quantity of knightly blood that was shed. This last circumstance was perhaps
necessary to qualify it with the epithet of ‘gentle,’ in the opinion of some of these
historians. I think the reason why the English are the bravest nation on earth is,
that the thought of blood or a delight in cruelty is not the chief excitement with
them. Where it is, there is necessarily a reaction; for though it may add to our
eagerness and savage ferocity in inflicting wounds, it does not enable us to endure
them with greater patience. The English are led to the attack or sustain it equally
well, because they fight as they box, not out of malice, but to show pluck and
manhood. Fair play and old England for ever! This is the only bravery that will
stand the test. There is the same determination and spirit shown in resistance as in
attack; but not the same pleasure in getting a cut with a sabre as in giving one.
There is, therefore, always a certain degree of effeminacy mixed up with any
approach to cruelty, since both have their source in the same principle, viz. an
over-valuing of pain.[67] This was the reason the French (having the best cause and
the best general in the world) ran away at Waterloo, because they were inflamed,
furious, drunk with the blood of their enemies, but when it came to their turn,
wanting the same stimulus, they were panic-struck, and their hearts and their
senses failed them all at once.
5. The English are fond of change of scene; the French of change of posture;
the Italians like to sit still and do nothing.
6. Bells are peculiar to England. They jingle them in Italy during the carnival
as boys do with us at Shrovetide; but they have no notion of ringing them. The
sound of village bells never cheers you in travelling, nor have you the lute or cittern
in their stead. The expression of ‘Merry Bells’ is a favourite and not one of the least
appropriate in our language.
 7. The strict formality of French serious writing is resorted to as a foil to the
natural levity of their character.
8. See Newgate Calendar for 1758.
9. B—— at this time occupied chambers in Mitre court, Fleet Street.
10. Lord Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he should
come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation together. This
great and celebrated man in some of his works recommends it to pour a bottle of
claret into the ground of a morning, and to stand over it, inhaling the perfumes. So
he sometimes enriched the dry and barren soil of speculation with the fine
aromatic spirit of his genius. His ‘Essays’ and his ‘Advancement of Learning’ are
works of vast depth and scope of observation. The last, though it contains no
positive discoveries, is a noble chart of the human intellect, and a guide to all
future inquirers.
11. As when a person asks you ‘whether you do not find a strong resemblance
between Rubens’s pictures and Quarles’s poetry?’—which is owing to the critic’s
having lately been at Antwerp and bought an edition of Quarles’s Emblems. Odd
combinations must take place where a number of ideas are brought together, with
only a thin, hasty partition between them, and without a sufficient quantity of
judgment to discriminate. An Englishman, of some apparent consequence passing
by the St. Peter Martyr of Titian at Venice, observed ‘It was a copy of the same
subject by Domenichino at Bologna.’ This betrayed an absolute ignorance both of
Titian and of Domenichino, and of the whole world of art: yet unless I had also
seen the St. Peter at Bologna, this connoisseur would have had the advantage of
me, two to one, and might have disputed the precedence of the two pictures with
me, but that chronology would have come to my aid. Thus persons who travel from
place to place, and roam from subject to subject, make up by the extent and
discursiveness of their knowledge for the want of truth and refinement in their
conception of the objects of it.
12. There are few things more contemptible than the conversation of mere
men of the town. It is made up of the technicalities and cant of all professions,
without the spirit or knowledge of any. It is flashy and vapid, or is like the rinsings
of different liquors at a night-cellar instead of a bottle of fine old port. It is without
body or clearness, and a heap of affectation. In fact, I am very much of the opinion
of that old Scotch gentleman who owned that ‘he preferred the dullest book he had
ever read to the most brilliant conversation it had ever fallen to his lot to hear!’
13. Is this a verbal fallacy? Or in the close, retired, sheltered scene which I
have imagined to myself, is not the sunflower a natural accompaniment of the sun-
dial?
14.

‘Once more, companion of the lonely hour,

I’ll turn thee up again.’
 Bloomfield’s Poems—The Widow to her Hour-glass.

15. Rousseau has admirably described the effect of bells on the imagination in
a passage in the Confessions, beginning ‘Le son des cloches m’a toujours
singulièrement affecté,’ &c.
16. I have heard it said that carpenters, who do every thing by the square and
line, are honest men, and I am willing to suppose it. Shakspeare, in the
‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ makes Snug the Joiner the moral man of the piece.
17. Mr. Bentham proposes to new-model the penal code, on the principle of a
cool and systematic calculation of consequences. Yet of all philosophers, the
candidates for Panopticons and Penitentiaries are the most short-sighted and
refractory. Punishment has scarcely any effect upon them. Thieves steal under the
scaffold; and if a person’s previous feelings and habits do not prevent his running
the risk of the gallows, assuredly the fear of consequences, or his having already
escaped it, with all the good resolutions he may have made on the occasion, will
not prevent his exposing himself to it a second time. It is true, most people have a
natural aversion to being hanged. The perseverance of culprits in their evil courses
seems a fatality, which is strengthened by the prospect of what is to follow. Mr.
Bentham argues that all ‘men act from calculation, even madmen reason.’ So far it
may be true that the world is not unlike a great Bedlam, or answers to the title of
an old play—‘A Mad World, my masters!’ This is our world, but not his. Life, on
looking back to it, too often resembles a disturbed dream, which does not infer its
having been guided by reason in its progress.
18. [‘Have I not seen a household where love was not?’ says the author of the
‘Betrothed;’ ‘where, although there was worth and good will, and enough of the
means of life, all was embittered by regrets, which were not only vain, but
criminal?’—‘I would take the Ghost’s word for a thousand pound,’ or in preference
to that of any man living, though I was told in the streets of Edinburgh, that Dr.
Jamieson, the author of the ‘Dictionary,’ was quite as great a man!]
19. Certes more Whigs become Tories. This may also be accounted for
satisfactorily, though not very rationally.
20. I have said somewhere, that all professions that do not make money breed
are careless and extravagant. This is not true of lawyers, &c. I ought to have said
that this is the case with all those that by the regularity of their returns do not
afford a prospect of realizing an independence by frugality and industry.
21. ‘Il a manqué au plus grand philosophe qu’aient eu les Francais, de vivre
dans quelque solitude des Alpes, dans quelque séjour éloigné, et de lancer delà son
livre dans Paris sans y venir jamais lui-même. Rousseau avait trop de sensibilité et
trop peu de raison, Buffon trop d’hypocrisie à son jardin des plantes, Voltaire trop
d’enfantillage dans la tête, pour pouvoir juger le principe d’Helvétius,’—De
l’Amour, tom. 2. p. 230.
My friend Mr. Beyle here lays too much stress on a borrowed verbal fallacy.
 22. Waverley, vol. iii. p. 201.
23. This lady is not, it is true, at Covent Garden: I wish she were!
24. ‘Mais vois la rapidité de cet astre qui vole et ne s’arrête jamais.’—New
Eloise.
25. The thoughts of a captive can no more get beyond his prison-walls than his
limbs, unless they are busied in planning an escape; as, on the contrary, what
prisoner, after effecting his escape, ever suffered them to return there, or took
common precautions to prevent his own? We indulge our fancy more than we
consult our interest. The sense of personal identity has almost as little influence in
practice as it has foundation in theory.
26. Taylor, of the Opera-House, used to say of Sheridan, that he could not pull
off his hat to him in the street without its costing him fifty pounds; and if he
stopped to speak to him, it was a hundred. No one could be a stronger instance
than he was of what is called living from hand to mouth. He was always in want of
money, though he received vast sums which he must have disbursed; and yet
nobody can tell what became of them, for he paid nobody. He spent his wife’s
fortune (sixteen hundred pounds) in a six weeks’ jaunt to Bath, and returned to
town as poor as a rat. Whenever he and his son were invited out into the country,
they always went in two post-chaises and four; he in one, and his son Tom
following in another. This is the secret of those who live in a round of
extravagance, and are at the same time always in debt and difficulty—they throw
away all the ready money they get upon any newfangled whim or project that
comes in their way, and never think of paying off old scores, which of course
accumulate to a dreadful amount. ‘Such gain the cap of him who makes them fine,
yet keeps his book uncrossed.’ Sheridan once wanted to take Mrs. Sheridan a very
handsome dress down into the country, and went to Barber and Nunn’s to order it,
saying he must have it by such a day, but promising they should have ready money.
Mrs. Barber (I think it was) made answer that the time was short, but that ready
money was a very charming thing, and that he should have it. Accordingly, at the
time appointed she brought the dress, which came to five-and-twenty pounds, and
it was sent in to Mr. Sheridan: who sent out a Mr. Grimm (one of his jackalls) to
say he admired it exceedingly, and that he was sure Mrs. Sheridan would be
delighted with it, but he was sorry to have nothing under a hundred pound bank-
note in the house. She said she had come provided for such an accident, and could
give change for a hundred, two hundred, or five hundred pound note, if it were
necessary. Grimm then went back to his principal for farther instructions: who
made an excuse that he had no stamped receipt by him. For this, Mrs. B. said, she
was also provided; she had brought one in her pocket. At each message, she could
hear them laughing heartily in the next room at the idea of having met with their
match for once; and presently after, Sheridan came out in high good-humour, and
paid her the amount of her bill, in ten, five, and one pounds. Once when a creditor
brought him a bill for payment, which had often been presented before, and the
man complained of its soiled and tattered state, and said he was quite ashamed to
see it, ‘I’ll tell you what I’d advise you to do with it, my friend,’ said Sheridan, ‘take
it home, and write it upon parchment!’ He once mounted a horse which a horse-
dealer was shewing off near a coffee-house at the bottom of St. James’s-street, rode
it to Tattersall’s, and sold it, and walked quietly back to the spot from which he set
out. The owner was furious, swore he would be the death of him; and, in quarter of
an hour afterwards they were seen sitting together over a bottle of wine in the
coffee-house, the horse-jockey with the tears running down his face at Sheridan’s
jokes, and almost ready to hug him as an honest fellow. Sheridan’s house and
lobby were beset with duns every morning, who were told that Mr. Sheridan was
not yet up, and shewn into the several rooms on each side of the entrance. As soon
as he had breakfasted, he asked, ‘Are those doors all shut, John?’ and, being
assured they were, marched out very deliberately between them, to the
astonishment of his self-invited guests, who soon found the bird was flown. I have
heard one of his old City friends declare, that such was the effect of his frank,
cordial manner, and insinuating eloquence, that he was always afraid to go to ask
him for a debt of long standing, lest he should borrow twice as much. A play had
been put off one night, or a favourite actor did not appear, and the audience
demanded to have their money back again: but when they came to the door, they
were told by the check-takers there was none for them, for that Mr. Sheridan had
been in the mean time, and had carried off all the money in the till. He used often
to get the old cobbler who kept a stall under the ruins of Drury Lane to broil a beef-
steak for him, and take their dinner together. On the night that Drury Lane was
burnt down, Sheridan was in the House of Commons, making a speech, though he
could hardly stand without leaning his hands on the table, and it was with some
difficulty he was forced away, urging the plea, ‘What signified the concerns of a
private individual, compared to the good of the state?’ When he got to Covent
Garden, he went into the Piazza Coffee-house, to steady himself with another
bottle, and then strolled out to the end of the Piazza to look at the progress of the
fire. Here he was accosted by Charles Kemble and Fawcett, who complimented him
on the calmness with which he seemed to regard so great a loss. He declined this
praise, and said—‘Gentlemen, there are but three things in human life that in my
opinion ought to disturb a wise man’s patience. The first of these is bodily pain,
and that (whatever the ancient stoics may have said to the contrary) is too much
for any man to bear without flinching: this I have felt severely, and I know it to be
the case. The second is the loss of a friend whom you have dearly loved; that,
gentlemen, is a great evil: this I have also felt, and I know it to be too much for any
man’s fortitude. And the third is the consciousness of having done an unjust
action. That, gentlemen, is a great evil, a very great evil, too much for any man to
endure the reflection of; but that’ (laying his hand upon his heart,) ‘but that, thank
God, I have never felt!’ I have been told that these were nearly the very words,
except that he appealed to the mens conscia recti very emphatically three or four
times over, by an excellent authority, Mr. Mathews the player, who was on the spot
at the time, a gentleman whom the public admire deservedly, but with whose real
talents and nice discrimination of character his friends only are acquainted.
Sheridan’s reply to the watchman who had picked him up in the street, and who
wanted to know who he was, ‘I am Mr. Wilberforce!’—is well known, and shews
that, however frequently he might be at a loss for money, he never wanted wit!
27. In Scotland, it seems, the draught of ale or whiskey with which you
commence the day, is emphatically called ‘taking your morning.’
28. Shylock’s lamentation over the loss of ‘his daughter and his ducats,’ is
another case in point.
29. It is provoking enough, and makes one look like a fool, to receive a printed
notice of a blank in the last lottery, with a postscript hoping for your future
favours.
30. Fawcett’s Art of War, a poem, 1794.
31. Lady Wortley Montague says, in one of her letters, that ‘she would much
rather be a rich effendi, with all his ignorance, than Sir Isaac Newton, with all his
knowledge.’ This was not perhaps an impolitic choice, as she had a better chance of
becoming one than the other, there being many rich effendis to one Sir Isaac
Newton. The wish was not a very intellectual one. The same petulance of rank and
sex breaks out every where in these “Letters.” She is constantly reducing the poets
or philosophers who have the misfortune of her acquaintance, to the figure they
might make at her Ladyship’s levee or toilette, not considering that the public
mind does not sympathize with this process of a fastidious imagination. In the
same spirit, she declares of Pope and Swift, that ‘had it not been for the good-
nature of mankind, these two superior beings were entitled, by their birth and
hereditary fortune, to be only a couple of link-boys.’ Gulliver’s Travels, and the
Rape of the Lock, go for nothing in this critical estimate, and the world raised the
authors to the rank of superior beings, in spite of their disadvantages of birth and
fortune, out of pure good-nature! So, again, she says of Richardson, that he had
never got beyond the servants’ hall, and was utterly unfit to describe the manners
of people of quality; till in the capricious workings of her vanity, she persuades
herself that Clarissa is very like what she was at her age, and that Sir Thomas and
Lady Grandison strongly resembled what she had heard of her mother and
remembered of her father. It is one of the beauties and advantages of literature,
that it is the means of abstracting the mind from the narrowness of local and
personal prejudices, and of enabling us to judge of truth and excellence by their
inherent merits alone. Woe be to the pen that would undo this fine illusion (the
only reality), and teach us to regulate our notions of genius and virtue by the
circumstances in which they happen to be placed! You would not expect a person
whom you saw in a servants’ hall, or behind a counter, to write Clarissa; but after
he had written the work, to prejudge it from the situation of the writer, is an
unpardonable piece of injustice and folly. His merit could only be the greater from
the contrast. If literature is an elegant accomplishment, which none but persons of
birth and fashion should be allowed to excel in, or to exercise with advantage to the
public, let them by all means take upon them the task of enlightening and refining
mankind: if they decline this responsibility as too heavy for their shoulders, let
those who do the drudgery in their stead, however inadequately, for want of their
polite example, receive the meed that is their due, and not be treated as low
pretenders who have encroached on the province of their betters. Suppose
Richardson to have been acquainted with the great man’s steward, or valet, instead
of the great man himself, I will venture to say that there was more difference
between him who lived in an ideal world, and had the genius and felicity to open
that world to others, and his friend the steward, than between the lacquey and the
mere lord, or between those who lived in different rooms of the same house, who
dined on the same luxuries at different tables, who rode outside or inside of the
same coach, and were proud of wearing or of bestowing the same tawdry livery. If
the lord is distinguished from his valet by any thing else, it is by education and
talent, which he has in common with our author. But if the latter shews these in the
highest degree, it is asked what are his pretensions? Not birth or fortune, for
neither of these would enable him to write a Clarissa. One man is born with a title
and estate, another with genius. That is sufficient; and we have no right to question
the genius for want of the gentility, unless the former ran in families, or could be
bequeathed with a fortune, which is not the case. Were it so, the flowers of
literature, like jewels and embroidery, would be confined to the fashionable circles;
and there would be no pretenders to taste or elegance but those whose names were
found in the court list. No one objects to Claude’s Landscapes as the work of a
pastrycook, or withholds from Raphael the epithet of divine, because his parents
were not rich. This impertinence is confined to men of letters; the evidence of the
senses baffles the envy and foppery of mankind. No quarter ought to be given to
this aristocratic tone of criticism whenever it appears. People of quality are not
contented with carrying all the external advantages for their own share, but would
persuade you that all the intellectual ones are packed up in the same bundle. Lord
Byron was a later instance of this double and unwarrantable style of pretension—
monstrum ingens, biforme. He could not endure a lord who was not a wit, nor a
poet who was not a lord. Nobody but himself answered to his own standard of
perfection. Mr. Moore carries a proxy in his pocket from some noble persons to
estimate literary merit by the same rule. Lady Mary calls Fielding names, but she
afterwards makes atonement by doing justice to his frank, free, hearty nature,
where she says ‘his spirits gave him raptures with his cook-maid, and cheerfulness
when he was starving in a garret, and his happy constitution made him forget every
thing when he was placed before a venison pasty or over a flask of champagne.’ She
does not want shrewdness and spirit when her petulance and conceit do not get the
better of her, and she has done ample and merited execution on Lord Bolingbroke.
She is, however, very angry at the freedoms taken with the Great; smells a rat in
this indiscriminate scribbling, and the familiarity of writers with the reading
public; and inspired by her Turkish costume, foretells a French or English
revolution as the consequence of transferring the patronage of letters from the
quality to the mob, and of supposing that ordinary writers or readers can have any
notions in common with their superiors.
32. Is it not this that frequently keeps artists alive so long, viz. the constant
occupation of their minds with vivid images, with little of the wear-and-tear of the
body?
 33. ‘Laws are not like women, the worse for being old.’—The Duke of
Buckingham’s Speech in the House of Lords, in Charles the Second’s time.
34. An expression borrowed from a voluble German scholar, who gave this as
an excuse for not translating the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ into English. He might
as well have said seriously, that the Rule of Three in German was different from
our’s. Mr. Taylor (the Platonist, as he was called) was a singular instance of a
person in our time believing in the heathen mythology. He had a very beautiful
wife. An impudent Frenchman, who came over to London, and lodged in the same
house, made love to her, by pretending to worship her as Venus, and so thought to
turn the tables on our philosopher. I once spent an evening with this gentleman at
Mr. G. D.’s chambers, in Clifford’s inn, (where there was no exclusion of persons or
opinions), and where we had pipes and tobacco, porter, and bread and cheese for
supper. Mr. Taylor never smoked, never drank porter, and had an aversion to
cheese. I remember he shewed with some triumph two of his fingers, which had
been bent so that he had lost the use of them, in copying out the manuscripts of
Proclus and Plotinus in a fine Greek hand. Such are the trophies of human pride! It
would be well if our deep studies often produced no other crookedness and
deformity! I endeavoured (but in vain) to learn something from the heathen
philosopher as to Plato’s doctrine of abstract ideas being the foundation of
particular ones, which I suspect has more truth in it than we moderns are willing to
admit. Another friend of mine once breakfasted with Mr. D. (the most amiable and
absent of hosts), when there was no butter, no knife to cut the loaf with, and the
tea-pot was without a spout. My friend after a few immaterial ceremonies,
adjourned to Peel’s coffee-house, close by, where he regaled himself on buttered
toast, coffee, and the newspaper of the day (a newspaper possessed some interest
when we were young); and the only interruption to his satisfaction was the fear
that his host might suddenly enter, and be shocked at his imperfect hospitality. He
would probably forget the circumstance altogether. I am afraid this veteran of the
old school has not received many proofs of the archaism of the prevailing taste;
and that the corrections in his History of the University of Cambridge, have cost
him more than the public will ever repay him for.
35. When a certain poet was asked if he thought Lord Byron’s name would live
three years after he was dead, he answered, ‘Not three days, Sir!’ This was
premature: it has lasted above a year. His works have been translated into French,
and there is a Caffé Byron on the Boulevards. Think of a Caffé Wordsworth on the
Boulevards!
36. Is not this partly owing to the disappointment of the public at finding any
defect in their idol?
37. An old friend of mine, when he read the abuse and billingsgate poured out
in certain Tory publications, used to congratulate himself upon it as a favourable
sign of the times, and of the progressive improvement of our manners. Where we
now called names, we formerly burnt each other at a stake; and all the malice of
the heart flew to the tongue and vented itself in scolding, instead of crusades and
auto-da-fés—the nobler revenge of our ancestors for a difference of opinion. An
author now libels a prince; and, if he takes the law of him or throws him into gaol,
it is looked upon as a harsh and ungentlemanly proceeding. He, therefore, gets a
dirty Secretary to employ a dirty bookseller, to hire a set of dirty scribblers, to pelt
him with dirt and cover him with blackguard epithets—till he is hardly in a
condition to walk the streets. This is hard measure, no doubt, and base ingratitude
on the part of the public, according to the imaginary dignity and natural
precedence which authors take of kings; but the latter are men, and will have their
revenge where they can get it. They have no longer their old summary appeal—
their will may still be good—to the dungeon and the dagger. Those who ‘speak evil
of dignities’ may, therefore, think themselves well off in being merely sent to
Coventry; and, besides, if they have pluck, they can make a Parthian retreat, and
shoot poisoned arrows behind them. The good people of Florence lift up their
hands when they are shewn the caricatures in the Queen’s Matrimonial-Ladder,
and ask if they are really a likeness of the King?
38. Properly, daubs.
39. Dr. Johnson has observed, that ‘strong passion deprives the lover of that
easiness of address, which is so great a recommendation to most women.’ Is then
indifference or coldness the surest passport to the female heart? A man who is
much in love has not his wits properly about him: he can think only of her whose
image is engraven on his heart; he can talk only of her; he can only repeat the same
vows, and protestations, and expressions of rapture or despair. He may, by this
means, become importunate and troublesome—but does he deserve to lose his
mistress for the only cause that gives him a title to her—the sincerity of his
passion? We may perhaps answer this question by another—Is a woman to accept
of a madman, merely because he happens to fall in love with her? ‘The lunatic, the
lover and the poet,’ as Shakspeare has said, ‘are of imagination all compact,’ and
must, in most cases, be contented with imagination as their reward. Realities are
out of their reach, as well as beneath their notice.
40. Zoffani, a foreign artist, but who, by long residence in England, had got
our habits of indolence and dilatoriness, was employed by the late King, who was
fond of low comedy, to paint a scene for Reynolds’s Speculation; in which Quick,
Munden, and Miss Wallis were introduced. The King called to see it in its progress;
and at last it was done—‘all but the coat.’ The picture, however, was not sent and
the King repeated his visit to the artist. Zoffani with some embarrassment said, ‘It
was done all but the goat‘—‘Don’t tell me,’ said the impatient monarch; ‘this is
always the way: you said it was done all but the coat the last time I was here.’—‘I
said the goat, and please your Majesty.’—‘Aye’ replied the King, ‘the goat or the
coat, I care not which you call it; I say I will not have the picture,’—and was going
to leave the room, when Zoffani, in an agony, repeated, ‘It is the goat that is not
finished,’—pointing to a picture of a goat that was hung up in a frame as an
ornament to the scene at the theatre. The King laughed heartily at the blunder, and
waited patiently till the goat was finished. Zoffani, like other idle people, was
careless and extravagant. He made a fortune when he first came over here, which
he soon spent: he then went out to India, where he made another, with which he
returned to England, and spent also. He was an excellent theatrical portrait-
painter, and has left delineations of celebrated actors and interesting situations,
which revive the dead, and bring the scene before us.
41. When Lord Byron was cut by the great, on account of his quarrel with his
wife, he stood leaning on a marble slab at the entrance of a room, while troops of
duchesses and countesses passed out. One little, pert, red-haired girl staid a few
paces behind the rest; and, as she passed him, said with a nod, ‘Aye, you should
have married me, and then all this wouldn’t have happened to you!’
42. If it were a show of wild beasts, or a boxing-match, the reasoning might be
somewhat different; though I do not know that it would. No people behave better
than the gods after the play once begins.
43.

‘Of whatsoe’er descent his Godhead be,

Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree,
In his defence his servants are as bold
As if he had been made of beaten gold.’—Dryden.

44. They would have a king in spite of the devil. The image-worship of the
Papists is a batch of the same leaven. The apishness of man’s nature would not let
even the Christian Religion escape.
45. ‘In fact, the argument drawn from the supposed incapacity of the people
against a representative Government, comes with the worst grace in the world
from the patrons and admirers of hereditary government. Surely, if government
were a thing requiring the utmost stretch of genius, wisdom, and virtue to carry it
on, the office of King would never even have been dreamt of as hereditary, any
more than that of poet, painter, or philosopher. It is easy here ‘for the Son to tread
in the Sire’s steady steps.’ It requires nothing but the will to do it. Extraordinary
talents are not once looked for. Nay, a person, who would never have risen by
natural abilities to the situation of churchwarden or parish beadle, succeeds by
unquestionable right to the possession of a throne, and wields the energies of an
empire, or decides the fate of the world with the smallest possible share of human
understanding. The line of distinction which separates the regal purple from the
slabbering-bib is sometimes fine indeed; as we see in the case of the two
Ferdinands. Any one above the rank of an ideot is supposed capable of exercising
the highest functions of royal state. Yet these are the persons who talk of the people
as a swinish multitude, and taunt them with their want of refinement and
philosophy.’—Yellow Dwarf, p. 84.
46. A lady of quality abroad, in allusion to the gallantries of the reigning
Prince, being told, ‘I suppose it will be your turn next?’ said, ‘No, I hope not; for
you know it is impossible to refuse!’ What a satire on the court and fashionables! If
this be true, female virtue in the blaze of royalty is no more than the moth in the
candle, or ice in the sun’s ray. What will the great themselves say to it, in whom at
this rate,

——‘the same luck holds,

They all are subjects, courtiers, and cuckolds!’

Out upon it! We’ll not believe it. Alas! poor virtue, what is to become of the
very idea of it, if we are to be told that every man within the precincts of a palace is
an hypothetical cuckold, or holds his wife’s virtue in trust for the Prince? We
entertain no doubt that many ladies of quality have resisted the importunities of a
throne, and that many more would do so in private life, if they had the desired
opportunity: nay, we have been assured by several that a king would no more be
able to prevail with them than any other man! If however there is any foundation
for the above insinuation, it throws no small light on the Spirit of Monarchy, which
by the supposition implies in it the virtual surrender of the whole sex at discretion;
and at the same time accounts perhaps for the indifference shown by some
monarchs in availing themselves of so mechanical a privilege.
47. Some persons have asserted that the Scotch have no humour. It is in vain
to set up this plea, since Smollett was a Scotchman.
48. This may be in part the reason of the blunder they have made in laying so
much stress on what they call the Cockney School in Poetry—as if the people in
London were proud of that distinction, and really thought it a particular honour to
get their living in the metropolis, as the Scottish ‘Kernes and Gallowglasses’ think it
a wonderful step in their progress through life to be able to hire a lodging and pay
scot and lot in the good town of Edinburgh.
49. It was not always so. But by knocking on the head the Jacobite loyalty of
the Scotch, their political integrity of principle has been destroyed and dissipated
to all the winds of Heaven.
50. My father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used to be
very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The last were
forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words,
and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled.
51. He complained in particular of the presumption of attempting to establish
the future immortality of man ‘without’ (as he said) ‘knowing what Death was or
what Life was’—and the tone in which he pronounced these two words seemed to
convey a complete image of both.
52. He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time I had as
little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at present of the Cartoons at
Pisa, by Buffamalco and others; of one in particular, where Death is seen in the air
brandishing his scythe, and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his
approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He
would of course understand so broad and fine a moral as this at any time.
 53. Some years ago, a periodical paper was published in London, under the
title of the Pic-Nic. It was got up under the auspices of a Mr. Fulke Greville, and
several writers of that day contributed to it, among whom were Mr. Horace Smith,
Mr. Dubois, Mr. Prince Hoare, Mr. Cumberland, and others. On some dispute
arising between the proprietor and the gentlemen-contributors on the subject of an
advance in the remuneration for articles, Mr. Fulke Greville grew heroic, and said,
‘I have got a young fellow just come from Ireland, who will undertake to do the
whole, verse and prose, politics and scandal, for two guineas a week, and if you will
come and sup with me to-morrow night, you shall see him, and judge whether I am
not right in closing with him,’ Accordingly, they met the next evening, and the
WRITER OF ALL WORK was introduced. He began to make a display of his native
ignorance and impudence on all subjects immediately, and no one else had
occasion to say any thing. When he was gone, Mr. Cumberland exclaimed, ‘A
talking potato, by God!’ The talking potato was Mr. Croker, of the Admiralty. Our
adventurer shortly, however, returned to his own country, and passing accidentally
through a town where they were in want of a ministerial candidate at an Election,
the gentleman of modest assurance offered himself, and succeeded. ‘They wanted a
Jack-pudding,’ said the father of the hopeful youth, ‘and so they chose my son.’ The
case of the Duke of York and Mrs. Clarke soon after came on, and Mr. Croker, who
is a dabbler in dirt, and an adept in love-letters, rose from the affair Secretary to
the Admiralty, and the very ‘rose and expectancy of the fair State.’
54. The only friends whom we defend with zeal and obstinacy are our
relations. They seem part of ourselves. We cannot shake them off till they are
hanged, nor then neither! For our other friends we are only answerable, as long as
we countenance them; and we therefore cut the connection as soon as possible. But
who ever willingly gave up the good dispositions of a child, or the honour of a
parent?
55. See Ada Reis.
56. This was necessary in Latin, where no order was observed in the words of a
sentence: in English the juxtaposition generally determines the connection.
57. Quere, Is the vocative ever a case?
58. An identical proposition is not an inference; but all reasoning consists in
inference, or in finding out one thing as implied in another. In comparing any two
objects, I have nothing previously given and cannot predict the result; but having
made the comparison, I have then something determined and fixed to go by; and
what else I discover or imagine must be in conformity with this first knowledge.
This coherence in propositions, or in the mind, is the force of reason, whereby one
idea acts as the ground-work or cause of another. If I apply B as a common
measure to A and C, and find it the same with both, it follows that they are equal to
one another; since otherwise I must suppose the same thing (B) to be equal to
unequal things, which is impossible as long as I retain my senses, or more
properly, my recollection. I have ascertained two lines to be of the length of a third;
that length cannot differ from itself; and therefore having settled what the two
lines are with respect to the third, I cannot conceive them to be different with
respect to one another, without forgetting myself, or what I know of them. If I had
no power of contemplating different propositions together, I could draw no such
conclusion; the conclusion therefore results from this comprehensive power of the
mind; and reason is the end or band that ties the bundle of our separate ideas, or
the logical fasciculus together.
59. This is the reason that low comedians generally come out in tragedy—they
do not perceive the difference between the serious and the burlesque.
60. Berkeley, in his Minute Philosopher, attacks Dr. Halley, who had objected
to faith and mysteries in religion, on this score; and contends that the
mathematician, no less than the theologian, is obliged to presume on certain
postulates, or to resort, before he could establish a single theorem, to a formal
definition of those undefinable and hypothetical existences, points, lines, and
surfaces; and, according to the ingenious and learned Bishop of Cloyne, solids
would fare no better than superficials in this war of words and captious
contradiction.
61. Hobbes is of opinion that men would deny this, if they had any interest in
doing so.
62. The common trick of making an imitation of the human countenance with
a napkin or the ends of the knuckles comes under the head of wit, not humour.
63. A red beard is not uncommon, but it is odious.
64. Some one compared B——, a tall, awkward country lout to Adam, who
came into the world full grown, but without having ever made any use of his limbs.
This was wit, though true; where then is the ingredient of incongruity? In altering
the idea of Adam at pleasure, or from a mere possibility to make it answer a
ludicrous purpose. Adam is generally supposed an active, graceful person: a lad
grown up with large bones and muscles, with no more use of them than an infant,
is a laughable subject, because it deranges or unhinges our customary associations.
The threads of our ideas (so to speak) are strong and tightened by habit and will,
just as we tighten the strings of a fiddle with pegs and screws; and when any of
these are relaxed, snapped asunder, or unstrung by accident or folly, it is in taking
up the odds and ends (like stitches let down) as they hang light and loose, and
twisting them into some motley, ill-assorted pattern, so as to present a fantastic
and glaring contrast to custom (which is plain sense) or the ideal, which
strengthens and harmonizes (and which is poetry)—that the web of wit and
humour consists. The serious is that which is closely cemented together by
experience and prejudice, or by common sense: the ludicrous is the incoherent, or
that which wants the cement of habit and purpose; and wit is employed in finding
out new and opposite combinations of these detached and broken fragments (or
exceptions to established rules) so as to set off the distinction between absurdity
and propriety in the most lively and marked manner possible. Proof is not wanted
here; illustration is enough, and the more extravagant the better; for the cause
being previously condemned in our prosing judgments, we do not stand upon
punctilio, but only wait for a smart, sly excuse to get rid of it; and hence tricking is
fair in wit, as well as in war: where the justice of the cause is not the question, you
have only to fight it out or make the best of the case you can.
65. Even then I should not despair. The Revolution of the Three Days was like
a resurrection from the dead, and showed plainly that liberty too has a spirit of life
in it; and that the hatred of oppression is ‘the unquenchable flame, the worm that
dies not.’
66. ‘In Scotland, at an execution, all appear melancholy, many shed tears, and
some faint away. But executions there are very rare.’—Burgh.
67. Vanity is the same half-witted principle, compared with pride. It leaves
men in the lurch when it is most needed; is mortified at being reduced to stand on
the defensive, and relinquishes the field to its more surly antagonist.